The Limitations Of Place

As a sympathetic but also sometimes skeptical observer of the “Front Porch Republic” style of conservatism, I think the distinction suggested here — between a philosophy of rootedness and a philosophy that just stresses “place” in general or idolizes the rural life in particular — is central to Porcherism’s ability to offer a realistic response to the ills of contemporary American life. A communitarianism that just suggests that everyone should find their own St. Francisville is obviously unresponsive to the reality of a post-agrarian society, but a communitarianism that just tells people to “stay put!” more generally, whether in cities or suburbs or exurbs, is likewise insufficient … because to a surprising extent, Americans are already doing just that.

Drawing on Census data indicating that declining mobility is not resulting in a closer-knit society, Ross sharpens the point:

We are staying put more than we did in earlier eras, and yet outside of the upper class it isn’t translating into the kind of personal and familial stability that communitarians want to cultivate.

So they/we need a story of what’s going on here.

This is all important and necessary. Here’s my guess at what’s going on.

Just because you accept the limits of place doesn’t mean that you accept limits. I have not found divorce statistics for my parish, but what I could find is not encouraging. Louisiana has one of the lowest outmigration rates of any state (meaning Louisiana people tend to stay put relative to other Americans), but one of the highest divorce rates. Granted, there are other factors that make Louisiana a place that ranks low on typical indicators of social stability — e.g., a relatively high poverty rate, a high percentage of African-Americans (who have lower marriage rates, and higher out of wedlock childbearing rates). I think it is also likely the case that recent relative immobility is not a matter of choice, but rather something imposed on people by the poor economy. People who don’t move because they choose to stay in place have a different mindset from those who don’t move because they cannot afford to.

Besides, just because you live in a place doesn’t mean you automatically involve yourself in the community, and build social and communal bonds. About 20 years ago, I visited my folks back in Starhill, and observed that they spent much less time with their friends than they had when we were kids. What seemed to be happening was that after everybody’s kids were grown and gone, the empty-nesters retreated into chronic TV watching. Satellite dishes were fairly new, and the overwhelming number of channels occupied a lot of time that had been spent socializing in the past. I don’t think it’s still that way with them at all, but that’s what I observed back then.

The point is, it’s really easy to live in a small place and to remain isolated, if you choose to be. There’s simply not a cultural pull towards communal engagement. As David Brooks’s column this week indicated, we have undergone a tectonic shift in American culture towards an individualist mindset. When I was a child, many of the dads I saw belonged to the Lions Club, the Jaycees, or some other kind of fraternal or social service organization. That just doesn’t happen as much anymore in America, period. The idea that there’s a geographical cure for rootlessness and the decline of community is simplistic. It would be madness for someone to remain in a place that was culturally toxic, especially to one’s children, simply to make a point about stability.

So yes, Ross is right that staying in place isn’t sufficient. Yet you have to start somewhere. Placelessness isn’t just a material condition for Americans, but a spiritual, emotional, and psychological one. One’s place may not be where one was born. But everyone needs a place. To believe that one should settle somewhere, that the good life for most people doesn’t involve constantly moving, is countercultural in today’s America. If you start to think why it matters to have a place, and to be a part of that place, much else follows, including a politics.

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31 Responses to The Limitations Of Place

“When I was a child, many of the dads I saw belonged to the Lions Club, the Jaycees, or some other kind of fraternal or social service organization. That just doesn’t happen as much anymore in America, period.”

The easiest and most plausible explanation for this, at least where I live, has been the advent of strict laws against drunk driving. I mean this very seriously. Take the good with the bad.

Also, working women changed things a lot. My dad could stop at the Elks for beers after work on occasion. My wife would kill me. Most professional men around here used to golf four or five times a week. My wife would kill me. Take the good with the bad.

Finally, the issue of limits comes up again. In the past, I believe you made a strong case that in order to come back, St. Francisville had to change, too. The Internet made remote working possible. That and other advances also made homeschooling more plausible. In effect, limits had to be REMOVED for you to return. And the removal of these limits, while offering very real benefits to you and yours, have the effect of removing you from the communal experience in very real ways.

I doubt you would willingly sacrifice these things in order to engage more fully in the community, because you care about these things deeply. But other people care very deeply about the things that they opt out in order to have, whether that’s a 4,000 sf McMansion or a home with a four-stall garage or a house crammed full of cheap WalMart stuff.

The fraternal organizations you mention always seemed strange to me, maybe even alien — I knew they existed but I never seemed to know anyone actually involved with them, and their presence was never really noticeable beyond an occasional ‘oh I suppose that’s their hall, there’s the name’ moment of recognition.

Growing as I did on the move in a military context, my dad’s own fraternal organization would have been, by default, his fellow officers, able to understand his life and work more than most (especially in the context of the submarine fleet, which is very much its own particular self-conscious elite, at least at the time!). I had the Boy Scouts wherever I went and I’m always glad and proud of that, however badly I think the organization finally needs to stop denying reality on the point of gay participants and leaders.

But my own ‘fraternal’ groups — and they aren’t even that, they have always been fairly well mixed in terms of gender — revolved around music, culture, writing and the participations gained via communication and, especially, online communication. If one finds the necessary and cohesive spark there for vibrant and intelligent discussion beyond the ordinary — and which does often shade over into politics and social issues — then the sense of something local that engages becomes less immediate, or at the least, less necessary.

Now this of course may just prove your point, that I’m much more in close and constant discussion with people hundreds of miles away than right next door. (This is in fact the case, literally, for me, though we’ve chatted briefly and are on good terms.) Yet I don’t feel…compelled to join in this kind of neighborly gathering/participation via formal groups you describe. I have many friends locally, some I see almost daily, others weekly, other monthly, and much activity goes on there. But things like the Elks etc. now give me the lingering feeling of what I’ve long called ‘organized fun,’ where the idea is you’re going to get together and do all these things…whether you like it or not.

Now none of this is to gainsay any charitable or locally helpful work actually done by said groups. More power to ’em. But — and you can extrapolate this to my own feelings about organized religion perhaps too easily — I have a full enough life as it is, with work and other commitments, to find much joy or interest in participating in a fraternal organization or anything similar. Not a ruinous one by any means, I’m lucky enough to work a job at 40 hours a week and support myself with it, without overtime. Yet I would rather not give too much of myself away in the end.

Now that may sound strange coming from, as mentioned, a proud Boy Scout. An Eagle Scout at that. But no matter of the organization or service, the uniform does not make the man or woman, instead the experience provides the guidance and direction we extrapolate later. The many friends of mine who participate in various things — the band moms I know (and I know plenty!), the neighborhood athletes and so forth — all contribute to their community in ways that suit, please and engage them, and I enjoy joining in irregularly, but only that, I admit.

For me the greater sense of connection and community has come on an individual level in the everyday world, the many people who have kindly thanked me over time for encouraging words, careful feedback, or simply being there in a tough time. This works for me, this builds the web of community, more so than something rendolent of a past I never felt a real connection towards. Is it an improvement on those times? No, that would be foolish of me to claim without a sense of comparison. And arguing one now lives in the best of all possible worlds leads to Panglossian folly. Rather, knowing who I am as well enough as I can be, and knowing I have more to learn, I have found a way to participate in a multilayered community, near and distant, in a way that feels like I contribute with pleasure than with a sense of wearisome obligation.

I don’t know that I would say not constantly moving is countercultural. Most people still have the idea of settling down at some point, at least I did, and I have moved around a lot. We live in a small town, but it is kind of a quasi-suburb at this point. I don’t know any of my neighbors. The fact that 3/4 of them are over 65 or Asian doesn’t help.

Part of what makes your move back home is, of course, a function of choice, having options – part of the solution (yours), but also, as you often comment, part of the problem. The bureaucraticization of family life since the early ’70s demonstrates some of that, as members can all be in one place – under one roof – but divided into separate bedrooms and, now, with private wifi connections to devices.

Partly impacted by affluence, family members used to HAVE to all be in the living room, since that was the main room that was heated in the wintertime. One TV as the eventual hearth, still had everyone together, albeit on TV dinner trays.

I’m guessing part of this “trend” is connected to the way people might more or less email others who are still in their daily life, as opposed to people they never see anymore. Facebook offers another version where people feel connected even though they’re not.

But we can customize our experiences now, so it’s harder for place to have its purchase on our lives.

I agree with Sam that working women changed things a lot. Also, homeschooling moms, who don’t have much time to volunteer or socialize, both building blocks of community.

When I was growing up, the families I knew included a woman staying at home who invested in activities that supported a church community of hospitality. The women had more overlap in life experiences. They educated their own children, and each other, about life skills.

Hospitality, offered to a small, meaningfully connected community over a period of years, really takes a quantity of time.
It also takes homes, which cannot be built and layered with meaning over night, and require ongoing maintenance, both of the physical shelter and relationships.

A community of hospitality is enriched by including families in different stages of “life cycles.” There is a great deal more segration by age in the town I live in today, than in the culture I grew up in. This change seems rooted in the influence of the public school system. People move here for the schools, can’t afford the taxes as they age, and move to suburbs with lower taxes.

Another factor that weakens the home, and then the community, is having people (men!) commute further from home to work. You can see this shift in action in Holmes County, Ohio, today, as Amish men are economically pressured to shift from farming to furniture factories. Van drivers pick them up in the morning and take them home in the late afternoon.

I wonder if we weren’t living in such a polarized time, people would be better able to accept your book for itself (from what I can tell having read your blog but not the book yet). You haven’t been selling it as a cure for pain or mortality or poverty, but as your story of your family and your town. You’ve bent over backwards to say, “I’m not saying that everyone should do what I did”.

As for Ross’s point, the evidence suggests that our declining social mobility doesn’t encourage a long-term frame of reference (“The upshot is that teen motherhood is much more a consequence of intense poverty than its cause. Preaching good behavior won’t do anything to reduce its incidence”).

Is the Louisiana divorce rate actually that high, compared to the rest of the country? The 2009 report you showed puts it tied at #12 (with Indiana) per capita for men, but tied at #27 (with Ohio) per capita for women, if I’m not miscounting the table rows.

Your report doesn’t appear to give divorce-per-existing-marriage figures, which are arguably more relevant to the health of marriages in a state, but generally speaking states with a high rate of contracting marriages (and Louisiana’s is higher than the national average for men, and on par with it for women) tend to drop down in the divorce-rate rankings when the rates are calculated per-marriage. (A 2008 report that calculated divorce rates this way, based on different data than used here, put Louisiana tied at #22 with West Virginia.)

All I can say to the Douthat article, is “This!” I also second Sam M. Money quote from the latter: “A limit freely chosen isn’t really a limit. It’s a consumer choice.”

In that regard, the community of, say, fifty or a hundred years ago was not a choice, consumer or otherwise. Grandma had to live with her kids and grandkids because she couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Everybody near you had to have your back because if one person in the community went down, there was a likelihood that the whole community was going down.

Really, a lot of the changes after WW II (which had really started in the 20’s, but were postponed by the Depression and the war) were freely chosen. Evul Capitalism didn’t move Grandma out–the kids got tired of her nagging, and she wanted to do her own thing and not have the kids in her face, and could afford to move out; so out she moved. People got tired of living with the uncultured jerks who made fun of little Johnny for being into arts and not likeing sports, so they moved somehwere else. And so on.

The problem is that in modern society, even choices to be rooted and stay put are in a sense artificial. A few years ago, I re-read the remarkable (and hard-to-find) book, A Double Shadow, by poet Frederick Turner. It got me to thinking about some of the very issues we discuss around here. For those who are interested, the index for the series I wrote on that novel is here, and the coclusion, in which I directly referenced some of the issues regarding community is here. What is to be done in the postmodern era? I have no clue.

“Local politics here in West Feliciana Parish have been intense these past few years. I’ve deliberately not paid attention to them since returning, because I’ve had other things to do, and because opinions run very, very strong.”

I’m quoting you from a different thread not to be snarky, and not to play ‘gotcha,’ but to illustrate an important point that no one seems to discuss or acknowledge. And that is simply people aren’t tied to their communities because its not very interesting and thus, they don’t want to be.

In the abstract, what you (and Doughat, and the rest) are saying is perfectly reasonable and, on the surface, correct: a sense of community is healthy, we should encourage it, etc etc. But the reality is that we just don’t identify ourselves as members of a particular community (parish, small town, neighborhood, whatever): we identify ourselves as essentially Americans. American (not state, not parish) taxes make a difference in our lives. American (not state, not local) political decisions make a difference in our lives.

I know more about Bobby Jindal, the governor of your state, than I do about my own (whom I can’t even name). Why? Not because he’s having any particular influence on my life, but because he is a national figure, and I get my news from national sources.

National news, national events, national policy is interesting: local news is not.

You are going to argue that local matters make more of a difference than I acknowledge: tax rates, or spending priorities, and so on, will affect how well my local school is funded, tuition at my state college, police policy or preferences, the state of the roads, and so on and so on.

That is not true. Public Elementary schools throughout the country look pretty much the same (and if they don’t, for example in extremely poor areas, federal money is closing the gap). Every high school is virtually culturally identical: the football team culturally dominates, there’s a band, the classrooms are basically the same. The idea that local culture has that much influence on the school is gone. One national culture defines them. Tuition rates? Basically irrelevant. State college tuitions, within reasonable limits, are basically the same. State of roads? Meh. Rich communities have nice roads. Old crumbling communities have old crumbling roads. The selection of a local politician doesn’t have that much influence on it.

There may be exceptions on the margins: as one completely arbitrary example,Sheriff Arpaio in Arizona may be a local politician that really is affecting local politics (whom we all know about through the national media…). Maybe your school is cutting band and you wish they wouldn’t. But those are exceptions, not the rule. And, as often as not, the answer (in both examples, above) is more federal involvement anyway (get the federal courts after Arpaio, and get more federal funding for our school).

In essence, local differences are basically economic rather than cultural or political: the upper middle class neighborhood in Baton Rouge is virtually identical to the same in Dubuque and Bridgeport. The crumbling side of town West Virginia looks a lot like the crumbing side of town in Atlanta which looks a lot like that side of town in Portland. I don’t need to pay attention to some arbitrary local political situation to best affect my life (like whether the justice department will allow popular votes to stand): I just need to move to the highest price neighborhood I can afford-which means I live in McMansion land.

Centralized media (through TV and news organizations), and centralized power (through the expansion of the federal government) have created a centralized culture. That creates a centralized focus in every way: media figures whom I never met are more familiar to me than the people in the house two houses away from me.

People aren’t self-deluded for not caring about local politics: they are entirely rational. In an empire, local politics just don’t matter.

“Partly impacted by affluence, family members used to HAVE to all be in the living room, since that was the main room that was heated in the wintertime. ”

Maybe in Appalachia.

The fact is simple, community, as it seems to be described in these contexts, has real downsides. It will control, it will limit. And sensible people won’t put up with that and will say bleep the community.

I remember, back in the 80s, when the great American post WW2 volkwanderung was being discussed, someone said that people could not wait to get away from their families. With the power of family and community to control being more limited now, in other words they are simply just ignored, it does not matter what Aunt Mathilda thinks about anything, people no longer feel the stress to move. They can just go about their lives and not care what the neighbors think.

I’m with Sam M: take the good with the bad. I think it’s also important to remember that the organizations that are fading away have their own entrenched provincialism (and sometimes racism and/or sexism) to blame. The only formal organizations my parents belonged to were their respective labor unions (where both were officers, and deeply involved in various capacities). Oh, and my dad was a precinct committeeman for a time (which was tricky, as my mom was a federal employee—I think ours was the only precinct committeeperson’s house with no campaign signs! Ma wasn’t paranoid about the Hatch Act as much as she thought it more prudent not to give management ammunition to attack her with—she was a good union steward and a thorn in their side). He spent a couple of years as an assistant coach too.

But they never got involved in anything else, because in all the places we lived, membership in those types of organizations was an ethnic/religious marker more than anything else, and those perceived to be “outsiders” were quite clearly unwelcome and uninvited.

In the Rust Belt, the economy carries a lot of blame, too. It’s not just time that belonging to formal institutions require, but money too (various donations in addition to dues). People who “belong” are constantly being asked to pony up, especially when others can’t or won’t, and after awhile some people leave—the cost/benefit ratio isn’t there. When money gets tight, people start taking side jobs or part-time jobs after regular work hours (mostly, people with kids).

But on the flipside, amongst the millenials in my Local, I see a lot more fatherly involvement and a lot less sexism—between their generation and my father’s is literally the difference between night and day as far as socializing. While they don’t often belong to formal clubs (especially those with restrictive memberships), they do get involved in charitable causes (Habitat, women’s shelters, children’s charities, computers for the poor, etc.).

But….while I’ve been lurking here for awhile and find the conversation around place and the Little Way interesting, the posts tend to assume an audience that comes from and has different experiences than what I’ve had. Cross-class conversations always involve miscommunication (IME), but when it comes to “place”….just increase that assumption exponentially.

At the end of the day, what creates a place are relationships, either present or from the past. The real problem is atomization, the fact that people establish weak, superficial relationships. In turn, this is due to the lack of shared ideals, of any sense of a common human vocation. Just trying to recreate a sense in a religious/philosophical vacuum seems hopeless to me.

“To believe that one should settle somewhere, that the good life for most people doesn’t involve constantly moving, is countercultural in today’s America”

Um, no it isn’t. It’s the norm. From the census bureau, quoted by Douthat in the very column you link to:

“The percentage of people who changed residences between 2010 and 2011 ─ 11.6 percent ─ was the lowest recorded rate since the Current Population Survey began collecting statistics on the movement of people in the United States in 1948, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. The rate, which was 20.2 percent in 1985, declined to a then-record low of 11.9 percent in 2008 before rising to 12.5 percent in 2009. The 2010 rate was not statistically different than the 2009 rate.”

And from Douthat himself:

“Now Americans are still a more mobile people than most. But if you’re looking for a straightforward link between staying in place and the health of America’s communities, this is not the trend you would expect. We are staying put more than we did in earlier eras, and yet outside of the upper class it isn’t translating into the kind of personal and familial stability that communitarians want to cultivate.”

And, personally speaking, I know no one (as in literally not one person) who think that moving constantly is a good thing. Some moves, yes…to school, for an important career improvement, for some important family reason, to retire, but “constantly” moving, and doing so merely as part of a general pursuit of “the good life?” Total straw man.

I’ve often thought that one of the great things about belonging to a church is that I find myself with very deep things in common with people who are quite literally nothing like me. They are much older, or much younger. They’re much smarter (easy to do) or not nearly as bright. They’re far more active, and far less active.

But faith unites us all…

The block where I’ve lived is much like a small town, 16 addresses total, one of which is a vacant lot. Some have lived here since the 1960s, others are renters who come-and-go. When we moved here 24 years ago it was not uncommon to find neighbors talking out on the street, but as the neighborhood “gentrified” that nearly never happens now. The annual block party was cancelled due to lack of interest, it’s been going on for nearly 4 decades.

We all spend more time in front of screens and less time in front of each other…which means more time interacting with people much like ourselves and less time interacting with people less like ourselves.

Rod, I am personally, gratefully enjoying your occasional post tagged for “place”, and I wish to offer possible food for thought. Warning to all readers: This is not an attempt to argue semantics. No dictionaries or thesauruses were injured in its composition or editing. 😉

The expanded phrase that comes to mind, a loose progression if you will, is:

The limitations we face.
The limitations we accept.
The limitations we challenge.

I think of that when I think of “my place”. Every place has limitations we must face. Some might succeed in not facing them by various means, but I would not think of that as healthy in any sense. Rather, the first decision upon discovering the limitations of a place is acceptance. Granted, with emphasis, that many people arrive at a place by coercion or absence of choice. I would humbly submit that my progression remains valid even for them.

Acceptance can be a simple binary (again, stipulating that some have no choice): I cannot live here, or I will find a way to live here, now that I clearly see the limitations of this place.

The final decision is choosing those limitations against which to focus one’s challenge. This can be the simplest accomodation at one end of the intensity spectrum, full-blown social activism at the other end, and every subtle point in between.

If there is to be a critical argument, Rod, concering place from any point of view, it can validly start with the choices made out of that final decision. I have friends who remain passive and quiet, unable or unwilling to get off of their duffs even to confront that noisy neighbor whose invasive plant species have overtaken their yards; other friends who shoot themselves in their feet by alienating the very people for whom their activism is intended to benefit. To balance that, I have friends who seem to be experiencing perpetual joy as they float gracefully from one place to another.

Very few of your critics have found that, or so I see it. I would love to see a thread focused on it.

Not a gotcha, Rod, but a genuine question — do you have any interest in a Lions/Elks/Jaycee/Rotary membership? If not, why not?

Again, that’s not a gotcha. My mother-in-law was in the leadership of the League of Women Voters for years, and would love for me, your other daughter-in-law, and her daughter to be involved, but none of us are. I have no desire to be involved though I love my MIL very much.

I know you are involved in community institutions — your church and your local homeschooling community are two that come to mind. I bet you are involved as a parent volunteer in one or more of your kids activities as well. That seems like a lot, and enough, no? I feel like Lions/League of Women Voters/et. may have outlived their usefulness.

Sam M is right, too, that fathers especially are much more involved in family life now than they were when we were kids, leaving less time for community organizations.

[NFR: That’s an excellent question, and I’ve thought of it. For me, it’s wholly a matter of time. Seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. The first job I ever had that had normal office hours was 2010, when I went to work for Templeton. In every previous job, I worked long and unpredictable hours. Now I work from home, but homeschooling and church take up all my free time, and I never feel that I have given my fair share to them. It’s also the case that people of my generation just don’t feel pulled to join those organizations. Bob Putnam has famously documented that trend. In my own case, I have never, ever been a joiner by nature, and have to be made to feel guilty for being a bystander in order to behave differently. There’s no social pressure to join now, not like when my dad was my age. — RD]

I’m trying to get involved in my area. Spending more time outside, meeting neighbors, striking up conversations. Joined the Knights at the parish, joined the civic association. Going to community events. It’s hard though when you’ve got a FT job and little ones at home. It really feels like work actually!

James in Ohio — you did get your wife’s buy-in on the extra commitments, right? I have to say, if my husband took on anything more without checking with me first I’d be mad. We have three little ones and feel maxed out.

Any mothers remember that feeling, after a baby is born and your husband goes back to work (if he was lucky enough to take time off when the baby was born)? I told my husband he could never get home fast enough at the end of the day. 🙂

“Is the Louisiana divorce rate actually that high, compared to the rest of the country? The 2009 report you showed puts it tied at #12 (with Indiana) per capita for men, but tied at #27 (with Ohio) per capita for women, if I’m not miscounting the table rows.”

The fraction of marriages in LA that end in divorce is nearly average (Rod, I think this should be your state’s new motto: We’re almost average). To get at this number from the document you linked, I ratioed the marriages to divorces. The average is 2.1+/-0.4 marriages per divorce. Maine seems to be an outlier in that the ratio there is 1 (maybe there is something wrong with the reporting of their numbers). The next lowest states are: Alabama, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont, and Mississippi at 1.6-1.7 marriages/divorce. Idaho has the highest success rate at 3.4. ND, HI, WY, UT, and DC range from 3.3-2.8. The ratio of marriage to divorce in LA is 1.9. They are tied with OK, AZ, NV, and GA (#14-18).

These numbers aren’t age adjusted which matters as well. The linked doc shows the average length of marriage adjusted for age. Interesting the divorce belt through the deep south shows the longest age adjusted marriages while the shortest are in NE and west coast.

The spread in all of these is small though, so I’m not sure that rankings really are all that meaningful. What I would conclude is that there is way too much divorce – children in particular have the right to be raised by their biological parents. Dissolving that family unit should be reserved for the most serious of circumstances. The rise of single parent families really does make it hard to form strong communities. Raising kids is hard when you have two parents working together. When you have to do it on your own, earning a living and taking care of your child(ren) doesn’t leave much time for bowling leagues, city council meetings, or church activities.

Helen, I would respectfully reject your inclusion of the LWV with the Lions et al. Theirs is not the same sort of community anchor as those fraternal/service organizations. Certainly, this being true of my own experience (my mother and both older sisters were very active in our local LWV chapter), it has direct ties to the community that support the appearance of similarity, but their explicit goals are very different.

I do join you, though, in encouraging Rod and lauding him for his Percy festival. I would consider it a third category to the two I imply above, but in its essence it is all about community.

I go to my kids soccer practice twice a week. I go to a game on weekends.

That’s basically four hours spent with kids that my dad NEVER would have spent. Yeah, he spent some of it at a bar or whatever. But he spent way more of it as a volunteer fireman. Which I don’t do. No time.

And right now, only two of my kids are in soccer. Wait until it’s all six. My sister has seven kids. Her husband spends at least 15 hours a week on soccer.

Given the math, what’s a community minded person to suggest? Less time in atomizing things like your kids sports… or more time on broader social institutions such as the Elks or the Rotary?

And here’s the thing, my wife doesn’t work outside the home. Neither does my sister. Still, husbands are expected to be way more involved. My dad was a mechanic. One piece of unreported community service he did a lot was fixing the cars of family members and friends for free in their driveways. He’d get a call. The friend would get a case of beer. They spend from dinner until midnight fixing it while my mom put us all to bed.

“One piece of unreported community service he did a lot was fixing the cars of family members and friends for free in their driveways. He’d get a call. The friend would get a case of beer. They spend from dinner until midnight fixing it while my mom put us all to bed.

My wife would kill me.”

Oh yeah — I’d kill my husband too. Actually, no, if he were dead he couldn’t pull his weight with the kids, so I’d just make him regret it. 😉

Franklin — point taken. I was thinking more in terms of stuff that takes up time, rather than the specific goals of the organization.

Place ain’t the same for everyone. Luckily for me, my ancestors left that place and I now appreciate what a world of good they did me. For now, my place is very much like the place you’re talking about Rod. The place where my ancestors came from, not so much.

Helen, thank you for gently clarifying your statements. I’m a bit on a hair-trigger today, and I need to take longer pauses between writing and clicking on “Post Comment”.

I would follow-up with a somewhat ironic point: The League of Women Voters has always welcomed men to membership, but until recently (last 30 years or so) it was the rare man who joined. During my childhood and teen years, the vast majority of members were housewives. I’m wondering now if they would have agreed with the “my wife would kill me” metaphor. I doubt it. 😀

I don’t recall the men of my childhood neighborhood having much of a social life outside their families and things relating to them– and their jobs of course. I vaguely recall a guy who belonged to the Moose lodge, and my step-mother’s first husband belonged to a motorcycle club (note: club, not gang!) but she belonged to it with him. And there were some dads who coached Little League or were scoutmasters– but that involved their kids too. It was the women who had the social activities and the groups. They ruled the social life of my childhood neighborhood just as the men ruled the economic life. And when they went to work too, all that dwindled away to a pale shadow of what it had been.

Sam M is right about something: today husbands and wives just don’t accept each other having any sort of life, outside work that is, which does not completely include the other. A man who has things regularly in his life that excluded his wife is thought to be up to no good.

A couple of years ago, I was working a prestigious but temporary professional job (I’m being very vague here) with some other young professionals in Alaska. It’s a field that can be very lucrative but has been hard hit by the recession. Some had jobs lined up for afterward and some didn’t, but I was the only not from Alaska who intended to stay to find work, since the job market here is still pretty good. One of my friends was dead set on going back to California where his family lives, even though there is hardly any job market left there at all. When I asked him why he wouldn’t take any work in Alaska, he told me “You don’t understand how hard it is to be up here all alone. You have your church [ed: we’re Mormon], I don’t have anything.”

And he’s right; without the knowledge that there would be a strong Mormon community no matter where we went, I would find it quite alienating to move across the country. So I wonder if the collapse of church attendance and generic civic engagement is driving BOTH the geographic stasis and the social decay.

“The rise of single parent families really does make it hard to form strong communities. Raising kids is hard when you have two parents working together. When you have to do it on your own, earning a living and taking care of your child(ren) doesn’t leave much time for bowling leagues, city council meetings, or church activities.”